A finance ministry official said since the service tax was capped at Rs 100 for domestic and Rs 500 for international travel, in many cases, the credit of tax paid on inputs used to provide services was more than the service tax paid by the airline.
G-20, the grouping of developed and emerging market economies, will focus on food security but issues concerning India like rising prices of vegetables may not come up for discussions at a meeting in Paris next week.
The commerce ministry has sought a review of foreign direct investment policy in the pharmaceutical sector, in the light of recent takeovers of domestic companies by multinationals.
The government may have to wait a little longer to get a trail of illegal money stashed by Indians in Liechtenstein.
Foreign cigarette companies could soon find it harder to sell their products in India. The government is looking into a proposal to ban foreign direct investment (FDI) in the wholesale marketing arms of these companies. It is also exploring the possibility of shifting the import of tobacco products from the open general licence (OGL) to the restricted list.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and other finance ministry officials have reached the last leg of pre-Budget consultations.
After increasing the direct tax collections target in 2010-11 by Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 200 billion), the finance ministry now plans to raise the indirect tax receipts by at least Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 3,25,000 crore (Rs 100 to Rs 3,250 billion) for the same period.
The move is aimed at freeing up about Rs 3 lakh crore (Rs 3 trillion) in tax value locked up in appeal.
They've proposed a sub-committee under the proposed GST Council or the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers to resolve any disputes in the tax's implementation.
Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance has criticised the government for not doing a review of the tax exemptions given to Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and an evalutation of the losses due to these.
